Only A Guise
by Fading to Black
Summary: The key word there is 'if', and I'm a spy. Spies at least the ones who plan on surviving learn to become very, very good at 'if'.


**AN: Okay, I wrote this _ages_ ago. I'm not sure how much sense it makes, but it was laying around collecting dust and I really don't have anything to lose. And this is all there is on this story. It will never be continued. It was dust-gathering for a reason, and that's because I say all that I need to say about this Grant here.  
**

I saw their looks. _Oh my God!_ The girls would think. Then they'd contradict themselves. _He is God!_ It's rather annoying really, but an excuse to get close to the girls. And by playing the part of a player, occasionally a mindless player, I could get close enough to hack emails and computers and learn everything they knew that I needed to. It had come in handy when on a couple assignments that had had spotty intelligence. Just because they _say_ the man is going to Jamison/Ware on his bus doesn't mean that he won't fall asleep and miss the stop or choose to go to another one, and end up on Yarmouth/Rt. 81, a corner about five blocks from Jamison/Ware. Let me tell you, its extremely annoying to run five blocks alongside a bus of all things while trying to look inconspicuous because you were ninety percent sure you had a tail, especially when you don't have the time to waste to lose it.

If you are going to spyglass into my thoughts, I might as well introduce myself. My name is Darian Lowell, better known as Grant Newman, Blackthorne Academy Student and I work for the Circle of Cavan.

Anyway, I was used to having the girls fall over me. And if one took too long. her friends would thaw out and I'd have access anyway. It was almost too easy. I, obviously, did intel work. I was able to be deep-seated because when I was a baby, I was put up for adoption. When I left, my parents installed a top-of-the-line tracker that no one would notice until it was activated. Two years ago, I re-established contact with them.

The parents I had grown up with were normal, if a little naive. Since that day two years ago, I played more sports at higher levels, lifted heavier weights, and went out with girls. It was the whole nine yards and they chalked it up to normal teenage hormones and development. What a load of manure. I was practicing, learning, improving, and biding my time while I waited for those sparse messages of theirs to come through.

I didn't know exactly who they were, only that they were highly placed in the Circle's central ranks. Well, the ranks of the largest coalition of Circle groups coming together since Ioseph Cavan and Gillian Gallagher, who in fact did not slay Ioseph. She killed his double, who I am told is a long-ago ancestor of mine who went by the name Kenneth Ruberts. About sixty or seventy years ago, in my grandparents' time, the name changed to Lowell.

Therein was my motive-the Circle's enemies killed my ancestors, who had been Circle for generations. Spies didn't like to rest operations on one person, but they had done that in me to teach me about the goings on of the Circle and to induce my trust. I knew that, but that may have helped me along. I didn't want to let down my parents, as my adopted parents taught me to respect and follow your parents, and because if anyone found out I was one of _those_ Lowells, then I could be captured and used for blackmail or interrogated or tortured for information. So they had had to teach me, for their own safety if nothing else. For that reason, I could trust them that far. After all, it would be counterproductive to see me captured. Very counterproductive.

Because of what had happened with Kenneth and Gillian Gallagher, I was a bit wary of having to go and spend a semester of my life at a school dedicated to her, featuring the sword with which my ancestor had been killed. So I just looked at it as an experience and practice for getting close to the girls and getting info. It was really too easy, with all the desperate girls who hadn't taken any classes with boys for years.

The only two that didn't seem impressed by me at all were the ones called Elizabeth Sutton, Alabama and Cameron Morgan, Nebraska. But that was alright. Cammie was Zach's girl, and Zach's mother was Circle so we'd hear about it anyway. As for that girl Liz, well she was a boring tech-type bookworm know-it-all. Ugh. I'd do it if I had to, but it was Cammie who had caught the Circle's attention, and she was accounted for. So, when getting close to the target fails, get close to their friends. That meant that I had to choose between Macey Winters, the senator's daughter, and Rebecca Baxter, the first (and only) British student.

As it turns out, that decision was made for me. Being a new student without proper prior knowledge, Macey was taking some of the less advanced classes while she caught up. The stupid dolt didn't even have the table of elements and all of their uses (either the public edition or the secret government one). That was simply inexcusable idiocy. That left Rebecca, the Brit.

Boy, was _she_ easy! As soon as I walked in to her class's classroom, she was flirting with me. That's what you get for having hormonal teenage girls with no access to boys suddenly meeting one. I flirted a bit with all of the ones who batted their eyelashes and tossed their hair at me, before 'choosing' Rebecca as my 'guide' around school. It meant I had a legitimate reason to spend time, possibly alone, with the unsuspecting girl. Really. The girl was supposedly a _highly trained almost-spy_. It ought to be obvious to her that I was just playing her, or that she ought to keep tabs on me.

It was in part because of me that the Circle was able to coordinate its attacks on Cammie Morgan. I'd heard later that Zach and his mother had a little falling out, and that that had made my information on her that much more critical, because they didn't have a second set to cross-analyze it with. That idiot. Did he not see the power the Circle wielded? Did he not understand what part he could play? How influential he could be? All if he just helped them by doing his job and getting close to a girl. Weak.

But I won't be. Weak, I mean. It's an act I put on, a part I'll play. The hot, dumb, clueless guy. Sometimes I even get tidbits dropped by very experienced spies who should seriously know better because the misconception of such an appearance that induces jock and lazy-player stereotypes in the subconscious. Therefore, the hot, dumb, clueless guy is no threat. Supposedly. I'd delighted over the years in proving such people wrong. And perfecting the disguise of a very muscular, very hot dolt.

It was a shame, really, how much so many people bought into it. And not just kids either. Dr. Steve, Joe Solomon, Headmistress Morgan and Abigail Morgan, for starters. All trained operatives. Ha! Blindsided to their innards, always focused on the external threats, which was easy enough territory to stay away from, especially if you were as deep as I was. And all I had had to do to penetrate so far into so many places and people was to get accepted to Blackthorne. Simple.

My father, Nathan Lowell, was a spy, and a highly placed one. He worked for the Circle. That was how I'd been introduced, through him. All that meant was I had a legacy to uphold. Didn't most people? Cameron Ann Morgan's mother, father, and (in their time) grandparents and their parents at least had been spies. They had all also been anti-Circle. Well, that ended now. The CIA had always been after the Circle after the incident of 'Ioseph Cavan vs. Gillian Gallagher', which made them stick out like a sore thumb in the community of such societies.

I know. I've been at the meetings. It's a source of shame to the Circle. We keep getting taunted by other groups like us because the CIA are still after us. The CIA have written off most of the others, or have never heard of their existence in the first place. It's only a matter of time, they all say. Well, no longer. Because, spearheading that campaign over the years had more often than not fallen on the shoulders of a Morgan, parent to child since Trent Morgan had started the watch effort many, many years ago. That could not continue. We would do something about it. We would buck off the reputation by defeating the Morgans and thereby defeating the CIA.

That was why I gave them the intel they needed to track Cammie. Whether or not they could take her down was their responsibility, and their fault if anything went wrong, weird, or faulty. I just knew it wouldn't be because of spotty intel.

Jonas's records were never too hard to crack. Sure, he was a tech-geek. Even so, he hadn't guarded too heavily against people trying to be himself from right outside the box. Well, I mean I had found out the checks by asking him to 'help me do it on my laptop' later as well. Might as well do it the easy way. Since I knew the checks, I had no problems. I often routed my Circle activities through his checks, trusting that they couldn't get through his firewall, that they'd be against both my checks and Jonas's, as well as implicating the geek, should the worst happen and someone suspect my true loyalties. They being whoever did just that. If it ever happened. I mean, my disguise is about as good as it could get in a place like this.

I was surrounded by spies here for years, and no one had found me out. That says a lot about the durability of my disguise. It's even better than Solomon's. _Solomon. Ha! _Of course, it had to be better than his. It took a while, but the CIA found him out. Just like they usually find things out. Usually being the key word. I'm dead as a doornail if they find me.

But that doesn't matter, because the key word there is 'if', and I'm a spy. Spies (at least the ones who plan on _surviving_) learn to become very, very good at 'if'.

In the meanwhile, it's _fun_ to watch the CIA run around in circles, chasing its own tail. I've got a reputation for being the airhead cutie to maintain, and a job to do. Happiness isn't necessary to my type, but it's nice to have.

So good luck, and happy hunting. Because the more people you find, the easier my job is, CIA freak. After all, this is only a guise.


End file.
